Elizabeth “Beth” Hawthorne (moderator) is a professor and a cybersecurity graduate program director in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, based in Arlington.

Hawthorne joined Khoury College in 2024 to collaborate with top-notch computer science and cybersecurity colleagues in the Align network and to impact the career trajectories of students. She teaches graduate courses in cybersecurity and digital forensics, and is particularly passionate about the exciting, dynamic field of cybersecurity education.

Previously, Hawthorne was an online lecturer at Rider University, where she served as founding director and curriculum developer for the university’s cybersecurity graduate program. As director, she taught online cybersecurity courses, advised students, supervised graduate assistants, and hired faculty. Hawthorne strives to broaden participation in computing and is a former chair of the ACM Education Board, which promotes computing education at all collegiate levels.

Awalin Sopan (expert panelist) is an AI and cybersecurity specialist, currently a principal AI engineer at Workday’s Cyber Defense organization, leading the development of security products and services using generative and agentic AI workflows. Sopan served as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow, helping the government build a better analytics platform. She earned her master’s in computer science with a focus on data science and visual analytics from the University of Maryland, College Park. Sopan brings people from different teams together and works closely with product users. She has been published in IEEE VIS, SocialComp, KDD and SIGCHI. She is a board member of Women in Cyber Security and the founder and lead of Bangladeshi Women in Computing under Anita Borg Institute.

More panelists and the registration link will be announced soon.